288 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



being soaked many times, and dried in the sun on his 

 somewhat portly person, it grew to look as if it might have 

 been bequeathed to him by some ancient missionary long 

 marooned, with no other garments, upon a coral island. 

 His ample boots, reaching to mid-thigh, completed his 

 professional garb, and when he was seen, in full sunlight, 

 skimming the rising tide upon the sands, he might have 

 been easily mistaken for a superannuated working shrimper. 



Our excursions were usually made to points a little 

 beyond the reach of the amateur, but sometimes we crossed 

 parties of collectors, in dainty costumes, such as Leech 

 depicted, with pails or baskets, and we would smile and 

 nudge each other at the reflection that they little suspected 

 that the author of TJie Aqtiariurn was so near them. On 

 one occasion, I recollect, at Livermead, we came across a 

 party of ladies, who were cackling so joyously over a 

 rarity they had secured that our curiosity overcame our 

 shyness, and we asked them what they had found. They 

 named a very scarce species, and held it up to us to exa- 

 mine. My father, at once, civilly set them right ; it was 

 so-and-so, something much more commonplace. The 

 ladies drew themselves up with dignity, and sarcastically 

 remarked that they could only repeat that it zvas the 

 rarity, and that " Gosse is our authority." 



My father was at his very best on these delightful 

 excursions. His blood was healthily stirred by the exer- 

 cise, by the eager instinct of the hunt. Extremely serious 

 all the time, with his brows a little knitted, he was never- 

 theless not at all formidable here, as he so often was at 

 home. His broad face, blanched with emotion, as he arranged 

 his little lens to bear in proper focus on a peopled eminence 

 of wet rock, had no such terrors for me as it sometimes had 

 when it rose, burdened with prophecy, from the pages of 

 some book of exhortation. The excitement in the former 



\ 



